Exploring art events in and around NYC

Soho

06/24/2010

Along with lots of other events celebrating NYC Pride this month, the Leslie Lohman Gay Art Foundation in Soho presents The 2010 Great LGBTQ Photo Show. Showcasing the work of over 80 photographers from around the world including Lola Flash, Jess T. Dugan, Katie Koti, Molly Landreth, Greg Mitchell, Grace Moon, Eric Rhein, Robert Siegelman, and Lars Stephan, the show features a variety of photographic styles - portrait, narrative, stylized, erotic, documentary, and photo-journalistic. Some themes the artists focus on include "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," same sex marriage, love, gender reassignment, sexual identity, sexuality, and more. As the press release states, "The 2010 Great LGBTQ Photo Show provides viewers with a broad survey of what contemporary queer photographers are working on today." See some of my favorite selections below. Learn more at Leslielohman.org. Through July 10th. Happy Pride!

06/23/2010

Two current photo shows feature pictures documenting another era of New York City, when glamour, creativity, and legendary parties were de rigour. Clayton Patterson: Pyramid Portraits on view at Esopus Space on West 3rd Street, features never-before-seen photos taken during the mid-80s at the East Village's Pyramid Club. Patterson (scroll down for my October 2009 post on his L.E.S. Captured show), a long-time photo/video/audio documenter of the Lower East Side and its inhabitants, took countless portraits of the drag queens who performed in Whispers, a weekly cabaret night at the Pyramid. As Patterson states, "Up to that point, drag had been about referencing movie stars like Bette Davis or Judy Garland... but the queens at the Pyramid Club invented entirely fictitious characters" (from the exhibit's press release). These characters (usually costumed on shoestring budgets) included "everything from space aliens to goth punks to suburban housewives" and were the colorful creations of performers like Tabboo!, Hapi Phace, Sun PK, John Kelly, Maze, John Sex, Sister Dimension, and International Chrysis. The portraits, taken in the Pyramid's dressing room, showcase the performers' artistry, imagination, and innovation. As the press release states, "these photographs document—and celebrate—the denizens of a dynamic, radically diverse Lower East Side, a community that would soon be decimated by the AIDS epidemic (and in the ensuing years, by relentless gentrification and development of the neighborhood)."

Esopus Space is an intimate, nonprofit exhibition and performance space located in an office building at 64 West 3rd Street. Founded in 2003, the venue "provides an accessible and noncommercial arena in which creative people and the public can connect in meaningful, productive ways." Learn more at esopusspace.org and learn more about Clayton Patterson: Pyramid Portraits atesopusmag.com. Through July 15th.

Down at Broome Street's Clic Gallery is Smash His Camera: The Notorious Photographs of Ron Galella. Galella, the self-coined "bandit of images," is the original, pre-TMZ paparazzo, having shot countless, glamorous celebs since the 60s, most infamously Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis whom he regularly stalked and who ultimately got a restraining order on him. Along with pics of smiling and/or partying stars, his candid shots capture Jackie O and her children off guard, Sean Penn punching another lensman, and Mick Jagger flipping the bird. The photos on display seem to be primarily from the 80s, many showing Andy Warhol hanging around NYC and at Studio 54 with his famous friends. According to the show's press release, "In the past few years, Galella has become recognized as one of the foremost chroniclers of twentieth century America" with many of his photos added to the permanent collections of many major institutions.

Smash His Camera: The Notorious Photographs of Ron Galella is on display in conjunction with the premiere of Leon Gast's documentary on the photog's career, Smash His Camera, which debuted on HBO on June 7th. Learn more at clicgallery.com. Through June 30th.

06/22/2010

The Drawing Center in Soho currently has on view a great show, Leon Golub: Live & Die Like A Lion?
featuring the late painter's drawings made between 1999-2004. Leon Golub was born in Chicago in 1922 and studied art history at the University of Chicago before serving in the army during WWII. After the war, Golub returned to Chicago and studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his M.F.A. in 1950 and met his wife of over fifty years, artist Nancy Spero. The pair created works that delivered strong, controversial messages opposing political and social injustices. After living in Paris from 1959-1964, the couple settled in New York where they continued creating politically charged works based on current, global events until their deaths (Golub in August 2004, Spero in October 2009).

The Drawing Center is the first institution to exhibit Golub's late drawings and presents "approximately 50 oil slick and ink on Bristol board and vellum drawings" (from show's press release). The exhibit also features an unfinished painting of two lions started in 2001, "preliminary 'background' drawings," and a selection of the artist's source materials and images collected from various magazines. Golub's late drawings "mark a stylistic and thematic shift" showing "abstraction and representational forms... such as animals, species composites, and highly-sexualized females in dialogue with skeletons to expose his interest in human virtues, attributes, and shortcomings." The textural and colorful drawings featuring lions, dogs, skeletons, erotic nudes, and text, focus heavily on death and mortality and are sharp and oftentimes humorous. As the press release states, "The results are candid examples of an aesthetic immediacy and newfound freedom in the artist's late work." Learn more at drawingcenter.org. Through July 23rd.

06/16/2010

I thought I'd missed Szabolcs Veres' first solo U.S. exhibit Hyle at Spencer Brownstone, so I was excited to see it was still up when I passed by the gallery yesterday afternoon. As the Spencer Brownstone blog states, the 27-year-old Romanian artist "turns the genre of portraiture on its head with wild, expressionistic, and monstrous works." Veres' vibrant and violent pieces reinterpret "art historical themes of classical portraiture" and "break[s] them down in paintings that dramatically collapse distinctions between subject and object, and push his work toward a sumptuous, often disturbing visceral resolution" (from the show's press release). His oil paintings "merge landscape, human and animal" creating nightmarish mutants. The artist seems to have torn into his subjects and twisted them inside out, exposing their guts and innards for all to see.

According to the press release, the title of the exhibit Hyle in Ancient Greek translates to "matter." For Aristotle the translation of "hyle" was "a more conceptual reading than a physical one" making "matter" relative and "one that is more informed by abstract thought processes than by the stating of clear, simple facts." This reading definitely explains Veres' non-literal representation of his subjects and really makes you wonder what goes on in the artist's subconscious. While his multi-layered, richly colored works display some warped, grotesque images, they aren't necessarily scary. Through their ugliness, the figures appear vulnerable, weak, flawed, and human. Learn more at Spencerbrownstonegallery.com. Hyle was already extended to May 29th, so I'm not sure when it closes. Check with the gallery first if you plan to go.

05/19/2010

Deitch Projects' final exhibit, Shepard Fairey's May Day is certainly a crowd pleaser. From the throngs overflowing onto Wooster Street on opening night to the heavy daily traffic through the gallery, Fairey is helping Jeffrey Deitchbid adieu to NYC with a bang.

The show's name not only refers to its May 1st opening date and a "celebration of spring and the rebirth it represents" (from show's press release) but also references International Worker's Day or Labor Day which is observed in almost 100 countries as a day of "political demonstrations and celebrations coordinated by unions and socialist groups." With his large-scale, black, white, and red portraits of icons including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Deborah Harry, Nico, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer, Muhammad Ali, The Dalai Lama, Cornel West, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Fairey presents revolutionary figures whom he admires for their political and cultural contributions. As the artist states, "These people I'm portraying were all revolutionary, in one sense or another. They started out on the margins of culture and ended up changing the mainstream."

The term "Mayday" is also a "distress
signal used by pilots, police and firefighters in times of emergency." With this show Fairey is sending out a distress signal to call attention to the "political, environmental, economic, cultural" problems that exist globally. As the artist behind the Barack Obama "HOPE" poster states, "By now we thought we would be in post-Bush utopia, but we're still having to call attention to these problems. Like any mayday call, however, the sound of the alarm also brings hope for help on the way... If we stay silent, there's no hope. But if we make noise, if we put our idea out there, then maybe we can make a change like the people in the portraits have done." Learn more at Deitch.com. Through May 29th.

05/12/2010

Housed in skate shop Supreme's former storage space on Crosby Street, Miami's OHWOW Gallery has set up a pop-up hosting Scott Campbell's If You Don't Belong, Don't Be Long. The Williamsburg-based artist's first solo show in New York City features his signature "cut currency work and three-dimensional pieces," along with a few prints and hologram paintings bearing ghostly and glittery images of skulls, roses, and spiderwebs that remind me of much nicer versions of the AC/DC and KISS mirrors amusement parks used to give away as prizes. Campbell's works made from layered, uncut sheets of U.S. dollar bills acquired from the Treasury are amazing and need to be seen to be believed. Carefully cutting into the currency, the artist has created incredibly detailed 3-part models of a heart and human skull along with a series of framed, 3-dimensional images of elaborate patterns, hearts, butterflies, the grim reaper, or slogans declaring. "Ass Gas or Grass." The intricacy of his designs and the precision of his cutting and sculpting is intense. According to the press release, Campbell's "imagery alludes to mortality, yet sculpted from the currency with which we trade our time and energy" and that's typically equated to power and potency. Campbell's painstakingly complex works remind me of Zane Lewis' collages made from pages and pages of fashion magazine advertisements. The two artists create meticulous and stylish works using materials of cash and commerce.

One look at Campbell's skillfully composed pieces and there is no doubt he has a ton of patience and a steady hand, two necessary traits for his other craft - tattoo art. Opening Williamsburg's Saved Tattoo in 2004, Campbell is a talented tattoo artist who has inked celebs including designer Marc Jacobs, model Lily Cole, and late actor Heath Ledger. Campbell happened to be visiting the OHWOW pop-up the afternoon I dropped by. The artist is heavily illustrated himself and very amiable. He admitted to not sleeping very much when I commented on all the detail in his currency pieces. His loss (of sleep) is definitely our gain.

Learn more about If You Don't Belong, Don't Be Long at oh-wow.com and read more about Campbell at nowness.com. Through May 30th.

04/22/2010

As a kid, I was always more drawn to stuffed animals than to Barbies (though I always desperately wanted a Barbie make-up head), so it's no wonder I was so fascinated by Out of the Black at Gallery Hanahou. Artist/creative director Matt Campbell explores "the attraction/revulsion dichotomy in our disposable environment" (from the press release) by taking "creatures [that] have all been created, loved, abandoned and finally entombed
in a symbolic black rubber skin. Wrenched out of the blue (the natural
living world) and thrown into the black (the artificial or “dead” world
that we create)" (from Out of the Black website).

Campbell's sculptures of formerly soft and fuzzy friends transformed into tragic, darkened symbols of our shameful, destructive consumerist culture are adorable, eerie, and melancholic. As Campbell states on the show's website, "They are sad but also, simultaneously, shiny and attractive. I am struck
by their iconic beauty — saddened by their bedraggled state. They’re
Cute yet Dark — whimsical but cynical..." He compares the creatures' contradictory appearances to human's paradoxical nature to create and destroy.

The little, blackened critters are sweet and ominous - each possessing a unique personality and oddly expressive, little plastic eyes. Campbell's stuffed creatures look a lot like the disturbing images of wildlife you sometimes see on the news - when animals are the unfortunate victims of oil spills. As the artist states, he titled his show Out of the Black because he is "hopeful that we’re now collectively
heading somewhat in a new direction away from our dark past." Let's hope he's right. Learn more at galleryhanahou.com and outoftheblack.org where you can see a white, fuzzy-wuzzy stuffed bear being dipped into black rubber. Through April 30th.

04/20/2010

Jules de Balincourt's Premonitions on view at Deitch features paintings "ranging from laptop size to mural size, and dealing in text, abstraction and figuration," (from the press release). In this series, the Paris-born, Brooklyn-based artist "responds to the changing cultural landscape with respect to technology and our collective imagination. What ways do technology bring us together but also what ways do they alienate and isolate us?"

Some of his figurative paintings, ie: A Few Good Men, Out of the Darkness and Into the Light, and US: As in You Me and Them, show groups of people congregating in outdoor spaces for unspecified and mysterious reasons - are they simply hanging out and enjoying nature or are they uniting for something more serious? As the press release states, in de Balincourt's "world there is a very fine line between a promised utopia and an impending disaster, the works perhaps treading a line that we all unknowingly walk in real life." The artist's abstract works consist of "fiber optic" arrangements with "chunky, taped-off execution" achieved with de Balincourt's "technique of thickly applied paint ripped apart by areas of tape [that] keep the frank and handmade element ever-present..."

The artist uses text in his works in a centralized way as in a command, ie: Move Together, or by using the words as a sort of frame as in Temporary Wellness and Speculator. In contrast, in Dismounted, a horse stands amidst whited out spaces covering up once were thoughts the artist wrote onto the composition and later edited out. Whether his Premonitions pieces are figurative, abstract, or textual, they all come together nicely to form a stylish and colorful series depicting today's youthful, techie world. Learn more at Deitch.com. Closes April 24th to make way for Shepard Fairey's May Day, which will be Deitch Project's last exhibition. (Fairey will reportedly begin painting a new mural on the wall at the northwest corner of Bowery and East Houston today.)

Four years ago, de Balincourt started STARR SPACE, an arts space in Bushwick that hosted art and music performances, special events and parties. Unfortunately, STARR SPACE is temporarily closed as de Balincourt deals with zoning issues. Learn more at starrspace.net.

04/13/2010

If, like me, you steer clear of cineplexes and big budget, overblown, 3D flicks like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, you can still don a pair of goofy, cardboard glasses and get some impressive digital effects at Ouroboros: The History of the Universe at Soho's ISE Cultural Foundation. Video artist Ali Hossaini teamed up with SWEATSHOPPE artists Blake Shaw and Bruno Levy to produce over 30,000 images that "combine to tell the story of cosmic evolution from the Big Bang to Lady Gaga in an immersive 3D video environment generated by SWEATSHOPPE's own software," (from exhibit's press release). The "animated holograms, created by seven channels of video, within a 2,000 square foot gallery" were inspired by Hossaini's studies of "the psychology of vision" and SWEATSHOPPE's "interest in the hypnotic, meditative and mind-altering potential of the moving image."

The dark gallery features one long, floor-to-ceiling projection flashing varying images of the solar system, war, hospitals, numbers, dinosaurs, and much more while three slightly smaller scale videos show colorful, kaleidoscopic, morphing shapes shooting off the walls. The dizzingly trippy videos successfully deliver SWEATSHOPPE's "hypnotic, meditative and mind-altering" moving images that you cannot take your 3D bespectacled eyes off of. Ouroboros is a cool, mesmerizing acid trip minus the drugs. Learn more at iseny.org, Hossaini's website at artlab.tv, and at SWEATSHOPPE.org. Through April 23rd. Extended through April 30th!

04/12/2010

There are two shows currently happening featuring works by some of the top fashion/art photographers working today. The first is Ryan McGinley's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere at Soho's Team Gallery. The 32 year-old, New Jersey born McGinley is best known for his shots of friends frolicking out in nature in the buff. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere features crisp, black-and-white nudes of skinny, pretty, young things all shot in McGinley's NYC studio. The photographer scouted out approximately 150 subjects from around the world and shot thousands of images of each, selecting one final definitive shot from each sitting to display in the show. Every shot is unique in terms of the sitters' pose and personality as well as his/her level of chemistry with McGinley. Along with the seemingly endless black-and-white nudes are four large-scale color landscapes, which according to the show's press release, "add a narrative backdrop to the exhibition."

In 2003, when he was just 24, McGinley was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney. He has shot fashion editorials for W Magazine, a 2007 Oscar nominee portfolio and a 2010 Winter Olympics photo essay for The New York Times Magazine. He followed Morrissey on tour for two years shooting the
performer's young, adoring fans in the audience all aglow in ecstasy and
stage lighting forhis 2007 seriesIrregular Regulars. And he shot a short film featuring Tilda Swinton for Pringle of Scotland's Spring/Summer 2010 collection. Learn more at teamgallery.com and at McGinley's website Ryanmcginley.com. Through April 17th.

Over in Chelsea, Andrea Rosen presents (in Gallery 2) Sculptographs by the dynamic, husband and wife photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, along with extra help from Eugene van Lamsweerde. The small exhibit features photographs from Inez and Vinoodh's vast archive of images, reworked with some wires, strings, branches, and more, to create revised collage-like works, or Sculptographs. It's interesting to see the artists add elements to their gorgeous, stylish photos of models and celebrities, in an attempt to give them new life. The additions are so subtle, I'm not sure if they are entirely necessary, but I'm always happy to see anything new from the talented photographers. Both from Amsterdam, the pair met in 1986 and broke into the fashion world in the early 90s shooting for every reputable fashion title and every major fashion house. They've also collaborated with musicians Sigur Ros and Bjork. The attractive couple recently shot themselves for Lanvin Men's Spring/Summer 2010 ad campaign.